Shooting: “Love, Inc.” @ Paramount Studios. Yeah, show night!! Cool! This is the first live audience gig in about 3 years for me. It’s going to be a long day, but not too demanding because we’ve already shot about 4 scenes. Get this? After running around like crazy all week, I don’t have any auditions today. Just chilling and concentrating on one thing.

In and out of make-up in a flash and I’m ready to rock and roll. We run the two scenes I have left and I’m done until lunch. I actually did the intelligent thing during my break. I didn’t yack on the phone or fiddle with my PDA; I took a freakin’ nap and it was great.

During lunch I get a welcoming call from my agent. Well, most calls from my agent are welcoming, but this was especially. I am on-hold for the “IBM” spot I busted my butt to get to yesterday. Yeah!! They should know for sure on Monday. Funny enough, one of the other “nerds”, Kevin Christy, is already scheduled to shoot an “IBM” next week. We both currently have “IBM” spots running. The difference is “Mr. Christy” is a bit higher on the totem pole than myself because he rarely has to audition for “IBM/Pytka” anymore. He’s done several spots for them. I’m not quite there yet, but I’m working on it.

Okay, locked and loaded. It’s time to put this thing in the can. The audience is in place and the cast is in the make-up room doing the speed read before we go on stage. The energy is electric; the cast and crew is confident in what we have to present tonight. Scene “A” starts out with a bang. My first scene is “B”; we do a take, get a notes and do another take, then a pick-up. Production tells us that we’ll pick it up later, after we let the audience go, to get it “clean” without the audience laughter.

I hang around and watch some of the rest of the scenes being shot. Next up for me was scene “M”, the last scene of the night. This time we had a really rough first take. We got re-writes/notes and did another take. Both takes had great parts and not so great parts, but I guess between the two of them we got it right. They said they would release the audience do pick-ups for this scene as well.

Before the pick-ups I got a chance to talk, one on one, with the director Arlene Sanford. Arlene is rare in television directing in that she does ½ hour multi-camera, ½ hour single camera, one hour drama, one hour dramedy and film. She told me a bit about her journey and said to keep doing my research. I’ve always felt it was best to get to know writers/producers and directors in this manner.

After pick-ups we were done for the week. It was great experience. Lots of hugs and “thank yous” were going around. When I was thanking Executive Producer Adam Chase, I mentioned to him that I my first TV job was on “Friends”. He was a writer/producer on “Friends” and wrote the episode that I was in back in ’99. Adam mentioned that to the 1st AD of "Love, Inc.", who was the 2nd AD on “Friends” when I worked on it. The first day on “Love, Inc.” we all thought we knew each other but couldn’t remember from where; at the last hour we figured it out.

The way the story line of “the nerds” goes there is room for us to return. I won’t hold my breath, but you never know….I’d love to go back for another episode.
After a crazy week, I want to thank both of my agencies for making many extra phone calls to accomidate my schedule. I worked all week plus had six auditions and was able to make all of them. Thanks!!